Wet wipes – modern day convenience or ecological nightmare?

impacting on the environment. It took many years and government intervention to tackle the plastic bag issue which we know has been successful in reducing the amount of bags going into landfill. More recently the use of flushable wipes has come to the forefront. Not as a problem with landfill but as a huge problem with sewers. It appears that the very handy and convenient wipe is responsible for about half the cases of sewer abuse (who knew?) in the UK. Much to the delight of sewer rats who, it has been found, use them as a luxury bedding item when making their nests.

Flooding and Fat…

Reports suggest that in the South East one of the water utility companies spends £1 million every month just clearing blockages half of which are caused by flushed food fat and wet wipes. They have around 109,000 km of sewers and 14 million people. As a result thousands of customers in the region suffer from sewage flood In the news recently we’ve seen an example of another modern day convenience products either to their homes or gardens. Seems a ridiculous amount of money and a lot of inconvenience however come farther North and it gets worse with an astounding £20 million a year spent in the North West alone and with only half as many customers as our friends in the South East. That’s 53,000 blockages. In 2013 a 15 tonne lump of congealed grease in London sewers took almost 3 weeks to remove again fat and wipes were the main culprits with serious flooding a very real threat.

Domestic drainage pipes are 10cm (4 inches in old money) and not designed to carry the waste that’s being put into them but it seems we put all manner of things down the toilet including healthcare waste, razor blades and medicines, not forgetting the good old cotton bud. Smaller items can get through the wastewater filters in treatment plants and end up in rivers; the sea and our beaches as clean water is returned.

But what about the flushable wipe?

Already you’re thinking about supposedly flushable wipes that disintegrate quickly and easily but research suggests that this is really not the case. Wipes, compared to toilet paper, are designed to be tougher so can contain plastic resins such as polyethylene. A weekend clearance on UK beaches found almost 4,000 wet wipes washed up – 50 for every kilometre of beach tackled and an increase of 400% over the last ten years. We have 12,500 kilometres of coastline – that’s a lot of wipes. And whilst we’re talking all things coastal, it’s possible that wipes in the sea end upon your plate as the plastic contained in them slowly degrades and is eaten by zoo plankton along with the micro beads in face scrubs. Zoo plankton as the base of our own food chain and is eaten by fish, caught, fried, filleted and served up as a staple of our diet but that’s another story…

So in simple terms – the only things to flush down the lavatory bowl are the bodily waste products we produce naturally, accompanied by toilet tissue designed to degrade quickly and completely. It’s not that difficult to make a difference…